Boat Grandma etc

What is it about an old place where you spent your childhood? No matter where and how far you go, physically or in time, evoking the place, through snatches of conversations or a special smell in the air, seems to bring on a magical sense of primordial peace and a clawing yearning

What is it about the old place then? What is it that is invoked when an old incident is recalled? What is it that makes up nostalgia anyway?

Visiting Nivedita Enclave, where I spent my entire childhood and teenage years, to attend one of my oldest friend’s ‘aiburobhat’ (literally a bachelors last lunch!!), the day before he left for Kolkata to get married, I visited one of the ‘old timers’ of the colony, a couple who live near my house. The woman I know only as ‘Nouko dida’ (boat grandma), a name I made up because she used to make paper boats for me when I was well, very small.

Our memory has a way of creating a frozen slow moving images of people whom we meet seldom but many times over a long time – an image here, a glimpse there. Mostly I remember Nouko dida as she used to watch me and my brother play cricket on afternoons, standing by her window, with one hand slightly stretched outside. The earliest memory of her I have is in a warmly lit drawing room, place buzzing with conversations and laughter and clinking of glasses and spoons. I remember a lamp on the side and her sitting on a chair beside it. I don’t remember if she made a boat for me then but I like to think that she did.

That was probably more than twenty four years ago. Two decades has been a short time when the days are counted, a very long time when memories are measured. Twenty four years is time enough to see a lot of certainties depleted, a lot of childhood comforts turn into cold realism, a lot of invincible grown-ups people to magically transform into mortals.

When I visited them now, we were glad to see each other as we had been glad to see each other always. Only I would not get any paper boats made for me. This time, for them, I, the visit, was the comfort and the giver of joy. Twenty four years is a long long time. Long enough to reverse who gives what

They would be leaving soon. In March, to Kolkata. For good. The housed that housed the boat grandmother would be sold to someone who knew nothing of that 5 year old who loved getting paper boats in the house. They were moving because they did not feel a part of the people around anymore. Too many people have gone away for good. The new ones, they just didn’t know how to be friends with, don’t know whether their child would love paper boats.

Memory is populated with people and people only. Memory of a mountain, of a brick wall, of a lane is linked with who you were with, even if that person was only you. When the people go, the bricks and paved stones become just that

Maybe that is why I was seeing ghosts – of all people who had walked the streets of Nivedita enclave and would never walk again, as I made my way outside the colony, where my car was parked. But new memories were being created. My friend was coming back from Kolkata with one…